A blog to communicate, discuss, and advocate for the civil rights and important role Small Flock Poultry Farmers can play (and should play) in Canadian Society.
Small Flockers are on the side of justice & truth, and against privilege & power. Unfortunately, the more we compromise with privilege and power, the more we reduce the capacity for truth and justice.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

No Antibiotics Ever

The millionaire owners of chicken factories are learning new propaganda techniques to continue their steady march to the Billionaire's Club. Propaganda is cheaper and easier than true change for the better.

There is growing awareness by the public of antibiotic resistance in
the food chain and factory farms, and it is being rejected by more and
more consumers. That's why propaganda is the weapon of choice to calm the masses, distracting them into falling back to sleep.

Perdue is #3 in the USA

Perdue Foods Inc. is a privately held poultry company. Perdue has 8% share in the US poultry market, 3rd biggest after Pilgrim's Pride and Tyson's Foods.

Perdue recently announced their perfection of a method for vaccinating all eggs to be hatched for meat birds without injecting antibiotics into the eggs before they hatch. It's easier, faster, and cheaper to vaccinate eggs, rather than vaccinating live, squirming chicks who just hatched.

While it may be easier, is it morally right, ethical, and acceptable to inject eggs with whatever drugs, chemicals, and Frankenstein broth the chicken factory owners decides will maximize their profits?

How the Chicken Factory System Works Today

There is a growing use of vaccines in the chicken factories so as to cut the risk for chicken farmers. Without vaccines, their questionable factory farming practices have significant risk of a major disease outbreak that will decimate the flocks, cutting profits. A second problem is the variability in the growth rate of the chickens. Chicken factories prefer that every chicken is like a clone of the other million birds; all of whom behave exactly the same, grow at the same rate, eat the same amount as every other bird; zero variability. With zero variability, the mad scientists employed by the chicken factories can optimize the chicken factory so that it maximizes their employer's profits, earning a fat bonus for the mad scientists.

However, I say that life is all about variability and diversity. The mad scientists at chicken factories disagree.

The mad scientists want a chicken factory to behave just like a robotized, computerized manufacturing plant that make widgits.

The chicken factory owners, the bosses of these mad scientists, seek maximum profits regardless of what it does to the chickens, or the meat that is produced by those chickens.

If necessary, the legions of lobbyists who work for the chicken factory owners will get the regulations changed again and again so that it is legal to do what has been found to be more profitable.

That's how the chicken system has worked for the last 50 years.

New Rules ?

Is Perdue out to change the rules?

As the #3 chicken producer, perhaps Perdue plan to become #1 by giving consumers what they truly want and need; wholesome, affordable chicken.

Alternatively, perhaps this is Perdue Propaganda, designed to make them look like the least obnoxious of all the chicken factories. The "least dirty shirt" is not necessarily a clean shirt.

In April 2014, I Blogged about the CFC finally banning the injection of ceftiofur into Canadian eggs destined for chicken factory meat production. Eleven years of hell for chicken consumers and the general public, from 2nd Quarter 2003 till the ban in May 2014 with deadly Superbug infections (and who knows what other consequences).

Perdue has now shown that if you spend the efforts to run a sanitary operation, the antibiotic injections are not needed. Will Perdue's competitors voluntarily choose to follow in Perdue's footsteps, or will consumer's preference force them to grudgingly follow suit?

It didn't take long to find out.

"RWA" (Raised Without Antibiotics) is the latest chicken marketing siren song. Everybody wants to use it because it allows the chicken factories to demand a higher price, and ensure quick sale of every bird that bears the RWA slogan.

It causes some to want to take the RWA label without earning it. At least that's the claim of Perdue and Sanderson Farms (5% market share, #5 is the USA). Perdue and Sanderson Farms are suing Tyson (#2 with 20% market share) for using RWA on their chickens, when Tyson is alleged to dose their chickens with ionofors, chemicals used to prevent or control necrotic enteritis and/or coccideosis; both of which run rampant in chicken factories, not so much of a problem in small flock poultry farms.

When the Titans start battling in court, the documents start being filed to justify their positions. That's when the public finally learns what has really been going on behind the curtain. Hopefully we will learn more and more just how crazy chicken factories have become.

Perhaps this growing awareness will allow consumers to say "A Pox on All their Houses", reject all chicken factory operations under their current definition, and return to the sanity of small flock poultry production from somebody in their local community; rather than a chicken factory a continent away.

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